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A sabha 75 years old
Llanstephan as seen through the trees and shrubbery that now hide its splendour from public gaze
Cross the Guruswami Bridge and just before you hit Poonamallee High Road, opposite the Ega Theatre and hidden by hoardings, trees and buildings is Llanstephan, a now-dilapidated mansion which was once in acres of garden space. It h
ad a swimming pool and a blue-tiled dining room that were the talk of the town. This was the home of Chinni Yelamanda Anjaneyulu Chetty of Kanniah and Sons, iron merchants of Nainiappan Naicken Street, George Town. Looking at it today, you can’t imagine the fabled dinners, concerts and dance recitals the house with the Welsh name once hosted. Some even state that MS sang for the first time in Madras in this house of one of the great patrons of the arts in the city in the early 20th Century; certainly, she sang there or at the weddings of members of the Anjaneyulu family often enough. Anjaneyulu Chetty and his friend Addanki Varadappa Chetty were the two most ardent supporters of the Indian Fine Arts Society from its founding in January 1932 by T. Chowdiah, the violinist, and B.V. Gopalakrishna Rao, Head Clerk of the Municipal Corporation’s Council section.
The IFAS was founded with little fanfare and has remained a low-key sabha whose jubilee celebrations, including this year’s 75th anniversary, have been as modest. But at least at one celebration, the Golden Jubilee one, there was a Presidential address that provided a note of sound and fury. The Society’s Sangeeta Kala Sikhamani that year, S. Balachander, after starting his address quietly discussing the mastering of the veena, suddenly turned on the critics and said, among other things, “Critics… critics…critics! They come in different shapes and sizes. In different categories. Good critics, respectable critics, bad critics, indifferent critics, responsible critics, half-baked critics, ignored critics of yesteryear, pampered critics of the present, well-intentioned decent critics, crooked irresponsible critics, perverted critics, sadistic critics, venomous critics…the classification seems endless!”
It was Madras’s Telugu-speaking community that founded the IFAS as a counter to the Tanjore Tamil orientation of the Music Academy that was three years older. Intriguingly, the two organisations came together in 1938 to organise joint conferences till 1943. This was a result of the founding of the Tamil Isai Movement; the Music Academy and the IFAS found a common cause in Telugu.
The IFAS’s self-effacing nature extended to not having a hall of its own. The early venues for its conferences were Gokhale Hall and Soundara Mahal on Govinda Naicken Street. It used the latter whenever women from the devadasi community sang or danced, Annie Besant having decreed that Gokhale Hall was not open to performances by devadasis. That thinking was to vanish in later years, when the attitude towards those from the devadasi community mellowed.
When music and dance began to move out of George Town to Mylapore and Triplicane, the IFAS held its conferences – and theatre performances – at such venues as Woodlands Hotel, Royapettah, Senate House, the RR Sabha’s Sundareswarar Hall, Victoria Public Hall, Vani Mahal, Nadigar Sangam Hall and, in recent years, German Hall. A venue of its own is still a dream.
From 1958, Emberumanar Chetty of the Perumal Chetty family played a leading role in guiding the fortunes of the Society. It was a leadership that was to last over 45 years. And during many of those years, he dreamed that a hall of its own might just be a possibility for the Indian Fine Arts Society. But it did not come to pass. Now, his brother, V. Sethuraman, the present president, hopes he and his team will be able to make it happen.
S. MUTHIAH
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